Wanderer

"What if you could choose your own life?" That is the question studied in this short story about a boy's experience in the afterlife.

“Wanderer!” The boy screamed into the sky. “I know you’re there somewhere! Answer me!” He glanced around angrily, waiting for something to happen. To his surprise, the sky turned translucent, and he saw a pair of rather large eyes staring down at him. The eyes were surrounded only by an endless void.

            The boy doubted he needed to scream to be heard, but he was angry, and did so anyway. “Come down here and talk to me face-to-face!” The eyes closed and the cloudy sky returned.

            The world seemed to bend and lurch as the imposing figure appeared in front of the boy. A great gust of wind followed behind, causing the trees to rustle loudly. The figure was easily seven feet tall, with broad shoulders. It was wearing a long cloak that obscured its entire body. It stared down at the boy.

            “How do you know of me?” It asked. The boy could hear the traces of interest in its voice.

            “I know what you’re doing to us, Wanderer! You’re using us like playthings!” The boy said back. The Wanderer tilted its head to the side.

            “I wonder…” It trailed off. A long arm materialized from under the cloak and reached out towards the boy. He took a step back as the thin finger came to rest at the base of his neck. He immediately felt the paralysis spreading through his body. He struggled to move, but it was too late.

            An appalling sensation stirred inside the boy’s chest, just underneath the Wanderer’s finger. The boy could see a white mist coming out from his chest as the Wanderer slowly withdrew his finger. He felt his consciousness slowly filtering into it, until suddenly he was floating free of his body. He was momentarily shocked by his new senses, and he looked back, seeing the last part of his soul coming out of his body. Once it did, his body promptly crumpled to the ground. He turned back to the Wanderer with a look of terror. The Wanderer’s eyes greeted him with recognition.

            “Aha.” It said. “Soul number one hundred thirty seven. I supposed it was you.” The boy observed his form. It was something he remembered distinctly; the form of his soul, which generally took the shape of the Wanderer"that is, the shape of a sexless human, but without any distinct features"but which could also shift into any other shape. “Your soul is the closest to purity"you retain only one dark spot.” The Wanderer reached forward to touch the black spot obscuring the place where the boy’s right eye might have been. The boy slapped its hand away.

            “How dare you do this to us! I’ve been through more lives than I can count, and I have suffered in every one!” The Wanderer smiled.

            “But that is why your soul is so refined; you take exclusively the bad lives.”

            “What do you mean?” The boy was confused. The Wanderer let out a short laugh, shaking its head.

            “Foolish. You called out to me, but you don’t contain all your memories, even in your natural state. You haven’t the slightest clue what you accuse me of.”

            The boy was speechless. But he was also hell-bent on proving his point. “So show me how you’re helping us. All I see is pain,” the boy challenged. The Wanderer smirked.

            “Very well then. Take my hand.”  The Wanderer offered its hand, but the boy was reluctant to take it. “You can’t exist without something to hold onto, so take my hand. That is, unless you want to disappear as soon as I leave.” The boy finally took its hand. The two figures disappeared from the scene, leaving behind the boy’s lifeless body. It had not occurred to him to worry for the safety of that body, because in the current circumstances, it seemed a completely useless endeavor to do so.

            The two figures appeared in a large cavern. All the walls were made of rough black stone, but where the ceiling should have been, there was just that same void. The boy peeked over the ledge they were standing on. He gasped when he saw the exact scene that caused him to remember the Wanderer. Below him, there was an endless procession of souls, standing in a line in front of a large glass screen. Strings of information in a strange language covered the screen, along with age progressing pictures of a man.

            There was a set of stairs going downward on either side of the screen, and endless amounts of souls came up from either side. The souls were made of white mist, like himself, but they were covered with many black spots of varying sizes.

            “Do you see now?” The boy turned to see the Wanderer sitting on a throne made of the same rough black stone.

            “No, I don’t see. What are they doing?” The boy’s hostility seemed to be diminishing.

            “I’m surprised you haven’t remembered yet. They are choosing their lives, of course.” The boy stared at him. The Wanderer stood and walked to the edge. “Each of you is given a choice. You may choose a bad life or a good life. The screen will give you photographs of the body you will inhabit, as well as a summary of the predicted life. It is up to you to choose the one you want.”

            “But it’s not that simple. No one would pick a bad life if given the choice.”

            “Correct. There is an incentive. The stairs there lead to it. The left stairs go to Scire, the place of learning. The right stairs go to Requiescere, the place of resting.”

            “Learning?”

            “Yes, learning. If you choose to take a bad life, you will most likely be allowed into Requiescere to rest for 100 years. However, if you choose to take a good life, it is much more likely you will be confined to Scire for 100 years. It is rather like the system of heaven and hell invented by the religions of Earth.”

            “So in Scire you punish the souls that had a good life? Why would you do that?” The boy sounded horrified.

            “That is exactly the point that I could not reveal to these souls.”

            “But why not? You’re just putting them through all of this without telling them why it’s happening at all!” The boy was getting angry again.

            “It’s rather like your Earth, no? If I told you the reason for it, it wouldn’t work.”

            “What wouldn’t work?”

            “Do you see those dark spots on these souls?” The boy didn’t like the way it had skirted around the question, but he responded.

            “Yes.”

            “Those spots are impurities. You can see my soul is completely white; I am free from any impurities. I do this to purge your souls of them.” The boy instinctively reached up and touched the dark spot over his eye.

            “What kind of impurity is it?”

            “It is an impurity which does not allow you to be open to existence. The dark spots represent things you don’t understand about yourself and about the nature of existence. In order to destroy these impurities, you must learn. You must understand.”

            “But why do you get to oversee us all?” The boy was angry again.

            “I came across your souls once while I was wandering. You were all pitifully attached to these rocks. I could see you were unable to move.”

            “Attached to the rocks? What do you mean?”

            “You could not move from them. You see, those dark spots are attracted to these rocks. If you were to try to move from them, the dark spots would stick to the rocks, and your soul would be torn apart. Seeing you all in this state, I decided to gather you up and try to remove those impurities so you could roam freely as I can. I built the planet you call Earth. I modeled each part of it after places I’ve seen in my travels. The center of the planet is made of this rock, to make sure that your souls could survive there. I made human beings for you to inhabit, and I made two separate sexes so the cycle of life could sustain itself without my intervention.

            “After I built the Earth, I built this cavern, with Requiescere and Scire to encourage you to use Earth as a place to destroy the impurities. I set a standard for you; you had to destroy at least one spot per life. If you did, I would allow you to rest in Requiescere before you had to go back and destroy another. If you failed to do so, I would put you in Scire, in one of the three sections: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos, depending on which you most needed work on. In these sections, I would inflict the necessary damage in order to give you the lesson needed to destroy an impurity. You would then be sent back for another life.

            “After I created this system, I transported you all here, and started you on the path.”

            “How did you transport us if we were attached to the rocks?”

            “You see, if you are surrounded by a pure soul, you will attach to it. When I came near, you naturally attached to my soul, and I brought you here.”

            The boy stood silent for a moment, contemplating what he had just been told.

            “Why are you telling me all this? Why not tell someone else?” He asked.

            “Because, as I said before, your soul is the closest to purity. You retain only the one spot. However, after several lives, that last spot refuses to be removed. It is my hope that by revealing the nature of this place to you, your last spot will disappear.” The boy was quiet for a few more minutes.

            “I’m the first one to get this far, aren’t I?” The Wanderer nodded slowly. “Why do they all have so many spots still?”

            “I suppose they don’t learn as fast as you do. You consistently have destroyed several impurities per life ever since the second. The first life you took was a good one, and I ended up sending you to Scire. After that, you took only the worst lives.” The boy shuttered at the returning memory of his trip to Scire. After that time, he had vowed he would never get sent there again.

            The boy stood for a moment, contemplating, then jumped off the ledge, floating to the rock below, and landing a little rougher than he had intended. The Wanderer floated gracefully down next to him.

            “I wouldn’t go jumping off of things until that last spot is gone"it acts as gravity, and pulls you towards the rocks.” The boy wasn’t listening. He was busy rediscovering his senses. He hadn’t had time to consider it before, but now that he did, he remembered that souls perceive existence much differently than humans. Humans saw with their eyes, felt with their hands… but souls, the simply feel. They perceive. Their entire being reached out to embrace the universe, sending a flood of information about it back to the soul. Souls could understand each other, and coexist with each other without saying a word. Of course, they did have their own language, in which no misunderstandings could be made.

            As if sensing the boy’s contemplation of it, the Wanderer began to speak. “The language of the souls is the perfect language; it is simple, yet complex enough to portray any idea. You have all tried to recreate this language subconsciously on Earth, but no language you could make was the same. There are so many different languages, but none of them come close to this language of the souls.”

            They stood there quietly for a few more moments, until the boy spoke.

            “So tell me this"why can lessons only be taught through pain?”

            “Happiness teaches you nothing of its own will. Through pain, you learn to endure"by coming to understand the nature of the pain caused you, you come to understand how it is that you can endure it. Through this, you learn the nature of the world, and the nature of your own soul. It is these lessons that you must learn.”

            The boy touched the spot over his eye. It felt less rough now.

            “Perhaps looking at your past lives might help?” The Wanderer motioned to the left, and the boy followed it. With a wave of its hand, the Wanderer brought up a screen, and images of different people started to flick rapidly across it. The boy watched intently, remembering all of the lives he had lived, and feeling their painful memories awaken in him like the individual lashes of a whip.

            The Wanderer watched the boy’s horrified expression as he saw the images. It saw the spot slowly fading off the boy’s face. A faint hint of it still remained. The Wanderer frowned.

            “Come with me.” The screen disappeared as the Wanderer walked through it. The boy followed behind, in a daze. There was a sudden lurch, and the boy fell to the ground. He was surprised however, to find that he had fallen on tall stalks of wheat.

            He looked up, and the view took his breath away. He saw a field of wheat that stretched on forever, and lighting it was a sunset of more colors than the boy could imagine, and a wide blue sky. He saw windmills turning far off. He looked at them with puzzlement.

            “Why are they here? Do you need energy for something?”

            “No. Someone else put them here, simply to look at. They are beautiful, no?” The boy, examining the scene, could not help but nod his head in agreement.

            There was another lurch, and this time the boy grabbed onto the hem of the Wanderer’s cloak to keep from falling. They were standing on the crest of a hill covered in lush green grass. The boy could see a lake off to his left and stone ruins below him. Groves of trees were off in the distance in all directions. The sky was covered in clouds, and he could see a bright patch where the sun was. Once again, the boy was in awe.

            He only had a short while to look, as the familiar lurch took him to yet another place. He stood ankle-deep in water that was the most beautiful shade of blue the boy had ever seen. The sky above was filled with stars, which seemed to reach out towards the end of everything. He felt as though their light was filling him, and expanding his view of the universe.

            He almost cried out when the lurch took him away yet again. But he saw nothing. He was standing in the middle of the void. The Wanderer stood beside him.

            “This is the place where you can make anything. Those places I showed you were places other beings have made or will make. You see, time doesn’t really exist here. You perceive time passing, but you can go forwards and backwards through time. And this place"this void"is where you can create anything you could ever desire.” With a wave of its arm, ground covered in leaves appeared below them, and a dark sky appeared above. Tall evergreen trees sprouted from nothing, and grew until they seemed to touch the sky. Shorter plants appeared between them. The scene the Wanderer painted gained beauty as it added small details into it. When it was done, it turned towards the boy.

            “Do you see now? This is what existence is. This is what awaits you.”

The boy’s soul seemed to radiate as the last of the spot disappeared from him. He gasped as he felt it evaporate from him, and he felt the lightness of being a pure soul. The Wanderer smiled at him. “And now it can be yours.” It gestured towards the forest. “My gift to you. This place is yours, forever. Consider it your home.” It touched the boy’s shoulder.

            “You are free.”